Just as suddenly he relaxed, lay back, and sucked in three deep breaths and slowly expired through flared nostrils. The man in white waited, casually watching the topless sun-basking girl, apparently asleep. Her flattened brown breasts lapped her armpits. The other man, with the narrow bald head, he ignored completely.
Gelstrom rose lithely and went to the white wooden rail. He was barefoot, even though the tiles were scorching. Exactly six feet tall, he seemed smaller and slighter when the man in white moved to stand alongside him. The two men stood looking out into the distance, not speaking.
It had never been calculated, and would have been difficult to prove, but Joseph Earl Gelstrom possibly had more power and wealth than any other private individual in the United States. He was head of a corporation whose subsidiary and associated companies dealt in chemicals, petroleum refining, plastics, electronics, armaments, aerospace, computers, timber, ranching, transport, the TV and movie industry, as well as substantial holdings in numerous diverse enterprises, from newspapers to motel chains, car hire to fast-food franchises.
His empire had been founded at the age of nineteen, started on the basis of his father's New Jersey interior-decorating business, which at the time employed nine people. Few people knew about his beginnings. Gelstrom had erected a barrier around his past that was as effective, and deadening, as the lead shielding surrounding a radioactive core. Nothing was known about him publicly prior to his takeover, at the age of twenty-three, of a small run-down chemical company that had a contract for the supply of detergents to the U.S. Army. The contract amounted to a paltry ninety thousand dollars a year until Gelstrom came up with a proposition to rationalize the army's vehicle-cleaning program, thereby saving them several million dollars annually. What he omitted to mention was that he had costed the new contract on the number of vehicles to be cleaned rather than the quantity of detergent to be supplied. In fact he had achieved the promised saving simply by halving the recommended amount of detergent per vehicle. His only expense was in relabeling the drums to that effect.
From there he went into chemicals for industrial and agricultural use, which led to timber and ranching. Like the Russians he had a series of five-year plans. In each of these periods he concentrated all his attention and efforts on a particular group of industries. Thus timber and ranching occupied him from the ages of twenty-four to twenty-nine. From twenty-nine to thirty-four it was electronics, computers, and plastics. From thirty-four to thirty-nine it was aerospace research and armaments, and in the past five years he had extended the JEG Corporation's interests into road and rail transport, TV and movie production, and the electronic home leisure and information market. Along the way he had acquired holdings in publishing, car rentals, sports equipment, motels, fast food, and sundry spin-offs.
Although each company was autonomous and able to direct its own day-to-day affairs, Gelstrom retained overall control, keeping a close watch with continual computer updates that enabled him to make instant policy decisions.
Over the years the media had tried repeatedly to penetrate the lead shielding and expose the man to the public gaze. His name was known, of course, but that was just about the sum of it. All his business dealings were conducted through the management of his companies, never face-to-face. If he went to a restaurant, a theater or social function it was never as himself, but undercover as any one of a dozen identities that had been as carefully prepared as a CIA case file.
Only three times had the media come close enough to cause him serious concern. On two of these occasions he had arranged through his grapevine of highly placed and influential contacts to have the story blocked and the reporters warned off. The third attempt, by a young and eager female TV reporter, had unfortunately succeeded--unfortunate, that's to say, for the reporter, who was hit by a truck while out jogging near her apartment in the Twin Peaks district of San Francisco. At about the same time her car had been stolen, which was later recovered minus a briefcase, tapes and two cans of exposed film.
Two attempts had been made on his life, and both sources identified, though only one satisfactorily resolved. This was the disgruntled ex-owner of a vending-machine company that the JEG Corporation had taken over, leaving him with little more than the shirt on his back. A Vietnam veteran, he shot Gelstrom at point-blank range with a sawed-off shotgun and blew his head clean off. His aim was excellent, his identification of the target less good, for he happened to have killed an Italian arms dealer with whom Gelstrom was negotiating a deal.
